Do Houseplants Really Clean the Air Indoors?

Houseplants usually give a fresh ambiance to a house. When people are interviewed about why they put plants inside their houses, they would usually say to clean or purify the air indoors. But scientists debunked this NASA-claimed myth, saying that houseplants do not improve air quality indoors.

Indoor gardening has also increased in the past months due to lockdowns and many of the plants sold are either marketed for aesthetic purposes or to purify their homes to avoid getting sick. However, scientists claim that this is just a myth that many would wish had not been busted.

Researchers at Drexel University in Philadelphia have found that houseplants do not improve the quality of air and do little to purify it inside a room, MSN reported.

It Needs Ten Plants in a Square Foot to Remove Toxins

The researchers analyzed 12 previous studies about the benefits of indoor plants, including the NASA Clean Air Study of 1989, and found that these experiments were done in a laboratory setting and do not represent the typical home where natural air goes in and out.

The NASA Clean Air Study of 1989 claims that some indoor plants could provide a natural way of removing toxic agents like benzene, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene in the air to neutralize the effects of sick building syndrome.

But the recent study said that it would take ten plants per square foot to remove these toxins. For some houses, this could be an attractive aim but not all houses are not built for this number of plants because by then it would look like a forest.

But that does not mean that indoor plants do not benefit humans. Several studies show that they can have an array of benefits to a person's physical and mental health. It improves the mood and reduces stress levels, as well as helps those who work from home or kids doing an online class to focus, said researchers from Exeter University in the UK.

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Remove the Source of Indoor Air Pollution

Joe Allen, a Harvard professor who studies how building design could influence health, said that indoor air pollution could come from several sources. It could come from cooking and VOCs that spring from chemical cleaners and synthetic coatings in the furniture and carpet.

According to National Geographic, experts advise that the most effective and obvious way of addressing indoor pollution is removing the source. According to them, spraying the room with an air freshener does not solve the problem as it is just like spritzing a room with perfume but failing to clean out the toxins.

Portland State University professor Elliott Gall said that it would have been wonderful if the myth about indoor plants is true. Having these beautiful plants clean the air would be truly helpful. But there are more effective ways to clean indoor air that people could use instead of relying on a myth.